Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / Why Are We So Focused On Diagnosing Narcissists Instead Of Defining Abuse? | Thinking Out Loud
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- Kimberly: Why are we so focused on diagnosing narcissists instead of defining abuse? Whether narcissism is considered a buzzword, an overused term, or the thing that finally gave language to an experience we couldn't explain, I think we were reaching for something important. For many people, learning about narcissism was the first time their lived experiences started to make sense. It gave name to the confusion, the manipulation. the emotional exhaustion, the feeling of constantly questioning yourself. I also think we may have missed something along the way. What if narcissism was never meant to be the final answer? What if it was the beginning of a much bigger conversation about emotional, psychological, mental, spiritual, and financial abuse? Humans do what humans often do. We take complicated things and we create simple language to understand them. Sometimes that language helps us heal. Sometimes we turn a concept into an identity. We create an all-or-nothing label because having a villain feels easier than sitting with the complexity of harm. Because abuse was never only about what someone is. It's about what someone does. It's about power. about control. It's about patterns. It's about asking a deeper question. Who had the power and how was that power being used? Maybe the conversation we need isn't only about identifying narcissists. Maybe it's about learning how to identify abuse. Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we begin, a quick note. This podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's gray areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I am not here to tell you what to think. I am here to offer frameworks that help you understand your relationships. strengthen your thinking and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. I think narcissism was the beginning of an important conversation. for many people, gave them language to something they had been experiencing yet couldn't explain. It helped people understand the confusion, the constant second guessing, the feeling of walking on eggshells, the experience of being told their feelings were wrong, their memories were wrong, or their needs were too much. for some people Learning about narcissism was the first time they realized, wait, Maybe this wasn't simply a communication issue. Maybe there was a pattern happening here. I think that matters. Language gives us the ability to understand our experiences. It gives us the ability to name harm. Sometimes naming harm is the first step towards changing our lives. I think something happened along the way. The word narcissism started becoming less of a tool for understanding patterns and more of the boogeyman. It became don't do Do this, or you'll become a narcissist. Don't act that way, or the narcissist will get you. While I understand why this happened, especially when people are trying to protect themselves from relationships where they felt powerless, I think we sometimes miss the deeper conversation. Because the question isn't only am I a narcissist? Sometimes the harder question is, am I harming someone? You might not have narcissistic personality disorder. You may not fit the specific label. You can still be abusive. You can still use power in harmful ways. You can still make someone feel small, afraid, trapped, or unheard. Because abuse isn't a diagnosis. It's about pattern. It's about power. It's about what happens when someone has power over another person and chooses to use that power to control, punish, silent, isolate, or harm. We see this in marriages. We see it between siblings. We see it between parents and children. We see it in workplaces. We see it in relationships. For example, is it okay to call your younger sibling names because you know they are younger and less likely to challenge you? Is it okay to dismiss your child's feelings by calling them spoiled, dramatic, or ungrateful because acknowledging their hurt would require you to look at your own behavior? Is it okay to use children as a messenger or a weapon against another family member because you know they don't have the power to push back is it okay for a doctor to belittle a new nurse because their position might give them more authority is it okay for a manager to create fear in employees because they know people need their paycheck These questions might look different on the surface. The question underneath it is the same. What happens when someone has power and they forget that the other person is still a person? I understand why we needed the conversation around narcissism. I needed it. It gave me language to understand relationships where I felt pressure to submit to someone else's comfort. It helped me leave. It helped me untangle the ways I learned to repeat some of the same harmful patterns that have been done to me. I remember understanding that accountability is not begging someone to stop hurting you. Accountability is what happens when someone cares that they hurt you. Because when someone says that hurt me, the response exploits the relationship. Do they become curious? Do they take responsibility? Do they try to repair? Or do they punish you for bringing it up? One way or another, punish you currently, or you know something bad's gonna happen in the future because there's a pattern there. I think this is where this conversation connects to bigger issues we are seeing and having language for. Take loneliness and relationships. conversation about male loneliness I think it's an important conversation. At the same time, women cannot be responsible for fixing the loneliness of people who refuse to examine the behaviors that have historically and still statistically show to. Be unsafe. There's a physical power dynamic that often bleeds into mental, emotional, and beyond. Sometimes someone reaches a point where the pain of staying in a relationship is greater than the pain of leaving. Or they do what they have to to make an escape plan to leave. The pain of being alone, the pain of being a single parent, the pain of starting over. The same thing happens in families. Sometimes the pain of staying connected to parents, siblings, aunt, uncles, grandparents become greater than the pain of estrangement. Sometimes an employee leaves. A job because the stress, the disrespect, the lack of safety becomes greater than the fear of finding a new job. Sometimes a community stops supporting a leader because the harm they cause becomes greater than the discomfort of the change and the unknown. Sometimes voters stop choosing a politician because their actions no longer align with the values the politician claimed to. Represent. These are all conversations about power. They're all conversations about what people tolerate. They're conversations about what happens when people finally realize my feelings matter in relationships that claim to value me. My autonomy is not something someone has to grant me permission to have. My boundaries are not punishment, they are information about what I need to feel safe. Maybe that was the most important thing the narcissism topic gave us. It gave people language. It gave people permission to ask. It helped people learn about dynamics that we have ignored for far too long. We have to keep going deeper because the goal was never to identify the villain. The goal was to understand harm, to understand power, to build relationships where people are allowed to be human beings. Sometimes the hardest part of learning about power is realizing we all have power over someone. The question is not whether we have it, the question is what do we do about it. I think that's the hardest part of any conversation about harm is that humans naturally want an answer. We want to know who is the bad guy, who caused this, who is responsible. Sometimes those questions are necessary. Sometimes harm does happen. People do hurt each other. People misuse power. People do make. Choices that create pain. I think something happens when we become more focused on identifying the villain than understanding the behavior. We stop asking, what happened? What patterns are present? What systems allowed this? What needs to change? instead, we are asking, who's the bad person? Who's the villain? Because a villain is simple. a villain gives us a place to put all of our anger towards. A villain gives us an easy way out because it means we don't have to sit with complexity. A villain means we don't have to look at how ordinary people in ordinary situations can participate in harmful dynamics. This is where labels can become complicated. A label can help us recognize a pattern. A label cannot replace understanding the pattern. When we only focus on the identity of the person, we can miss the actual behavior that needs to be addressed. We see this in families. We see parents who become so focused on proving that their child is the problem that they stop being curious about what their child is trying to communicate. We see children being labeled as disrespectful, dramatic, difficult, or ungrateful because their emotions Create discomfort for the adults around them. We see situations where parents use a child's therapist, teacher, or another authority figure as proof that the child is the problem instead of asking, What is my child experiencing? What part of this relationship needs to be repaired? What responsibility belongs to me as the adult? This is why certain messages make me uncomfortable. The quote from Bad Moms where the joke is, You wanna know why your mom's crazy you, motherfucker? I understand the humor behind it. I do. I think it revealed something we often do culturally. We reduce complicated pain into a person being the problem. The mom is crazy, the child is ungrateful, the husband is the problem, the wife is impossible. The family member who left is selfish. Who benefits from those explanations? They don't solve the problem. They don't make mothers feel more supported. They don't help dads feel less lonely. They don't repair relationships. they don't make family gatherings safer. They simply give us someone to blame. Sometimes the truth is much more complicated. Maybe a mother wasn't failing because she didn't know how to parent. Maybe she was exhausted, isolated, unsupported, carrying emotional labor, physical labor, financial. Financial stress and the expectation that no one person was meant to carry alone. Maybe a child wasn't being difficult. Maybe they were communicating distress in the only way they knew how. Maybe the family member who left wasn't abandoning everyone. Maybe they were the person who finally recognized that staying connected was causing more harm than leaving. The same patterns happen outside of families. In the workplace, we see employees labeled as lazy, difficult, or ungrateful when they are responding to poor leadership, unrealistic expectations, or unsafe environments. We see managers labeled as terrible people without looking whether they have the support, training, or accountability needed to lead well. We see doctors, teachers, politicians, and community leaders. Reduced to being heroes or villains instead of people whose choices, systems, and power need to be examined. We see relationships online reduced to leave immediately, cut them off, they're toxic. Sometimes those conclusions are necessary. Sometimes leaving is the healthiest choice. If every conflict becomes proof that someone is the villain, we lose the ability to understand human behavior. we lose the ability to grow, repair. Accountability is not the same as punishment. Accountability says, what happened? What was my role? What harm was caused? What needs to be changed? Punishment asks how do I make someone suffer for what they did? Protection is not the same as obsession. Protection asks, what do I need to be safe? Obsession asks, how do I prove this person is bad? Understanding patterns is not the same thing as creating identities. A person can make harmful choices without being reduced to one word forever. A person can make good qualities while still causing harm. Both things can be true. I think this is where we have to be careful because when we look for villains, we miss the bigger conversation about power. We miss how systems create harm. We miss how people learn harmful behaviors. We miss how People can either continue those patterns or choose to change them. The goal was never supposed to be finding the villain, the goal was supposed to be learning how to recognize harm. The question that changes everything is not who is the bad person. The question is what behavior is happening, who has the power, and what are they choosing to do with it? I think this is the most important shift we can make in understanding that abuse is a pattern. It's not a personality trait, it's not a diagnosis, it is not something we can always identify by looking at someone's personality by deciding whether they are good or bad. People are complicated. Because someone might be abusive to you and kind to everyone else. It doesn't justify it though. It doesn't make you the problem. Someone can be charming and still cause harm. Someone can love someone and still be controlling to them. Someone can have good intentions and still participate in harmful patterns. This is why identifying abuse matters. When we only focus on labels, we miss what is actually happening. Sometimes people stay in harmful situations because accepting the reality of the abuse feels too painful. If I admit this person hurt me, what does that mean about me? Does that mean I was stupid? Does that mean I should have known? Does that mean I failed? Sometimes When we are trying to make sense of harm, we can project so much onto the situation that we stop seeing clearly. We think we're seeing ourselves in the person hurting us. sometimes we weren't looking at ourselves at all. Sometimes we were carrying the stories someone else gave us. Sometimes someone else's shame, blame, and insecurities were projected onto us until we started believing it. Maybe I deserve this. Maybe I caused this. Maybe if I had tried harder they would treat me differently. This is why we need language. Not language for who someone is. Language for what someone is doing. Abuse can take many forms. Emotional abuse is often making someone responsible for another person's feelings, reactions, or behavior. It sounds like You made me do this. You deserved it. If you didn't make me angry, I wouldn't have yelled at you. You are too sensitive. You're the reason nobody can stand being around you. I was only cruel because I loved you. you should know how I feel without me having to tell you. The pattern underneath is my behavior is your responsibility. Instead of I am responsible for how I treat you, emotional abuse can also look quieter. It can look like constantly minimizing someone's feelings, saying, my gosh, they're so dramatic, changing the subject every time someone expresses hurt. I can't talk about this. Or anyway Only showing affection when someone behaves the way you want. I love you so much. Ew gross. Can't believe you wore pink on a Tuesday. Making someone feel like they had to earn kindness. You should be grateful for my love. Ho ho ho ho ho ho as the villains laugh. psychological abuse often attacks someone's sense of reality, identity, or trust in themselves. It can sound like you don't remember that correctly. That never happened. Everyone agrees you're the problem. You are the reason your parents divorced. You are responsible for everyone's happiness. You better not say anything or CPS might take you away. No one else would put up with you. The goal does not have to be a dramatic lie. Sometimes it is the repeated message that causes harm. You cannot trust yourself. You cannot make good decisions. You need me to tell you what is true. Over time, someone can lose confidence in their own thoughts, memories, or instincts. Mental manipulation often uses guilt, fear, confusion, or responsibility to control someone's choices. It can sound like if you loved me, you would do this. After everything I've done for you, this is how you treat moi? Mm-mm. No thank you. I only asked that way because you pushed me to it. If you had just listened, this wouldn't have happened. You made me hurt you. The pattern underneath is the shifting responsibility instead of I made a choice and I need to take responsibility for it or at least at the very bare minimum own it. The message becomes instead, you caused my harm, you are responsible for fixing it. Or you cause my behavior, you are responsible for fixing it. Spiritual abuse uses belief, religion, morality, or spirituality as a tool for control. It can sound like God won't love you if you do that. Your sexuality determines whether you are worthy of going to heaven. If you leave this relationship, you are failing spiritually. You have to obey me because my role gives me authority. Your questioning me is the same as questioning God. When did we need a middleman for Our own spirituality. Spiritual beliefs can be deeply meaningful and supportive. The harm happens when someone's beliefs are used to remove another person's autonomy, create fear, or justifies control in the name of the Lord. Not okay. Financial abuse is about controlling someone's access to resources, independence, or ability to make choices. It can look like you're the reason we're struggling financially. While that person has no access to the finances. Giving someone an allowance, while refusing to let them understand the family's financial situation, hiding spending, debt, gambling, or addiction, and then blaming someone else for the consequences, making someone financially dependent so they feel unable to. Leave. Using money as a punishment. If you leave me, you get nothing. You don't deserve access because you don't contribute. I'll cut you out of the will. Financial abuse is not only about money, it's about power and using money as a weapon. It's about whether someone has the ability to make choices about their own lives. When we look across all these forms of abuse, there are patterns that show up. Power differences. Abuse often exists where there is imbalance and power. This can be a husband and wife, a parent and a child, a boss and employee, a doctor and their patient, a teacher and a student, a caregiver and a dependent person. a partner who controls finances, housing, or social connection. Having power does not automatically make someone abusive. The question is, what do they do with the power they have? Are they empowering others or are they trying to control? Are they using it to harm or are they using it to help someone feel capable? Do they protect the person with less power or do they? They use that power to control them. Control can look like telling someone who they can talk to, deciding what someone is allowed to wear, controlling access to money, demanding constant update about someone's location, making decisions for someone while pretending it is for their own good. Control Often disguise itself as love. However, love allows choice. Fear can be obvious. Threats, intimidation, aggression. Fear can also be subtle. Fear of disappointing someone, fear of their reaction, fear of being punished emotionally. Fear of telling the truth. And the relationship will disappear. Punishment can look like the silent treatment, withholding affections, embarrassing someone, using consequences unrelated to the situation, making someone apologize over and over while refusing to repair their own behavior. The question becomes: is this about resolving conflict or is this about someone suffering? Isolation can look like preventing someone from seeing family members or friends. Creating conflict between people so they have fewer support. Convincing someone that nobody else understands them. Making someone afraid to seek outside perspective. Isolation increases dependence. Loss of autonomy. This might be one of the biggest indicators. Every person deserves ownership over themselves, their body, their thoughts, their relationships, their choices, their emotions. A relationship should involve influence, compromise, and care. Control removes the ability to choose freely. maybe this is why the question we need to ask is not, what are they? Are they a narcissist? Are they a bad person? Are they the villain? The deeper question is, what is happening? What patterns exist? Who has power? How is that power being used? Most importantly, is this relationship allowing both people to remain fully human? I think there is another important conversation we need to have. Sometimes people who have been harmed begin to mirror the behaviors that hurt them. A person who has been constantly criticized may become critical. A person who has been controlled may express some controlling behaviors. person who has been ignored may eventually lash out because they're desperate to be heard. That behavior still matters. people are responsible for the harm they cause. We also have to ask a deeper question. Are we looking at a person reacting to a harmful dynamic? or are we looking at the person who has the power and is creating the harmful dynamic? Those are not always The same thing. Power matters. Not because every person with power is abusive, because power changes the impact of someone's choices. A parent has power over a child. Caregivers have power over someone else who depends on them. A boss has power over the employee. A doctor has power over a patient. In many relationships, husbands have historically held more social, financial, and Legal power. than their wives, which can affect the dynamic within the relationship. That does not mean every husband is abusive. It means we have to look honestly at the structure of power and how it is being used. Sometimes people in position of power will flip the script. They will say, my ex is a crazy one. My child is the problem. My employee is impossible. They can't do their job right. My partner is too emotional, and sometimes those things may contain pieces of truth. People are complicated. Everyone makes mistakes. We have to ask who has the ability to set the rules? The ability to punish? The ability to leave safely. Ability to control resources. who was expected to accommodate? To submit. Abuse is not about who had a bad moment. It's about patterns and it's about power. It's about whether one person needs, feelings, and autonomy consistently become more important than the other person's. A person defending themselves poorly is not the same as a person using power to control someone. A person finally reacting after years of being unheard is not automatically the same as the person who created an environment where they felt powerless. This is why we should not only ask who reacted, we also have to ask what happened before the reaction, what pattern created this moment, who had the power, and what did they choose to do with it. I think this is one of the most hopeful parts of understanding harmful behavior is realizing something important. People can change. Sometimes something incredible happens when people finally have the language for what is happening. They learn about emotional abuse, manipulation, control, and unhealthy patterns, and instead of using that information to point fingers, something clicks. They realize, wait, I've done this. I've become the person who hurt me. I learned this behavior somewhere and I don't have to continue it. That moment is powerful Knowledge is an opportunity to look at ourselves. Some of the hardest parts of healing is realizing we can be both. Someone who was hurt and someone who has caused hurt. Those things can exist at the same time. It does not erase what happened to us, it does give us the opportunity to stop the cycle because it Accountability is not about deciding someone is a bad person forever. Accountability is about asking, what happened? What was my role? What did I need to repair? What needs to change? I think this is where compassion becomes important. Not only compassion for others, compassion for ourselves. Shame does not create lasting change. When someone believes I am the villain, I am a terrible person, I ruin everything, they often become consumed by their own shame that they stop being able to show up for the people around them. They're no longer focused on repair. They are focused on proving they are not bad. When we can say I did something harmful, I need to take responsibility, I am still capable of becoming something different. That is where change begins. It's why I try to remind myself the more compassion I have for myself, the more capacity I have to support the people who rely on me. When I am stuck in shame, nobody benefits. my family doesn't benefit, the people I lead don't benefit. When I recognize I can make mistakes, I can repair, I can grow, I can do hard things, I become a better person. A more patient partner, a more present person, a safer person. Maybe this is where we need to define leadership. leadership is not having the most power. Leadership is about what do you do with the power you do have. The best leaders do not create dependency, they create empowerment. They do not make people smaller so they can feel bigger. they help people become more confident in themselves. We see this everywhere. A parent who helps their child learn. independence instead of controlling every choice, a manager who trains and builds up their employees instead of keeping them afraid. A teacher who helps students trust their own abilities instead of needing approval for every decision. a partner who wants the other person to have a full life, friendship, interest, and autonomy outside of the relationship. A friend who can hear feedback without seeing it as an attack. True leadership asks how do I use my position to make this person stronger? Not How can I use my position to make this person obey me? This requires self-reflection because power does not only come from one place. Sometimes power comes from our roles. Parents, partners, boss, teachers, caregiver, community leaders. Sometimes power comes from culture, the advantages and disadvantages people experience because of their identity, background, age, gender, ability, education, finances, or social position. Sometimes power comes from knowledge, being the person who knows more. Sometimes power comes from resources, money, housing, transportation, access, connection. The question is not, do I have power? Everyone has power in different ways. The question is, am I using my power to control people or am I using my power to support them? Because at the end of the day, we are all people, different ages, different experiences, different cultures, different abilities, different levels of capacity. Different stories, still people. Maybe the goal was never to find every villain. Maybe the goal was to create more people who are willing to say, I have power, I have influence, I have responsibilities, and I want to use it differently. Because the opposite of harm is not perfection. The opposite of harm is choosing accountability, choosing to repair, choosing to respect, choosing to see the humanity in people, including ourselves. Back to the question: Why are we so focused on diagnosing narcissists instead of defining Abuse. Maybe the answer isn't because people wanted a villain. maybe the answer is because people were desperate for language. They were trying to understand something that hurt. They were trying to make sense of a relationship where they felt powerless. Sometimes naming what happened is the step forward to healing. Maybe the deeper question is what happens when we stop asking who someone is and we start asking what is happening? Because a label can help us recognize a pattern. A label cannot replace under understanding a pattern. Maybe the goal was never to find every narcissist at every corner. Maybe the goal was learning how power works, learning how control disguises itself as love, how fear can keep people connected to things that hurt them. Learning how accountability looks different from shame. Or maybe an even harder question is when I have power over someone, what am I doing with it? Because we all have power. Parents have power over children, a partner can have a power within the relationship. Leaders have power over the people they lead. Teachers have power over their students. Employers have power over employees. Sometimes the power comes from our roles, sometimes it comes from culture, sometimes it comes from our resources, our knowledge, our identities, or our abilities to make choices that someone else cannot. The question isn't whether we have power. The question is whether we use it to control people People, or whether we use it to help people become more themselves. Maybe the opposite of abuse isn't perfection. Wrong. Maybe it's becoming someone who can recognize harm, repair when we caused it, and choose differently moving forward. Because the people we hurt don't need us to be perfect, they need us to be accountable. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you ever had a moment where learning about harmful behaviors made you realize there was something you needed to change too? Or have you ever had to stop asking what is wrong with them and start asking what happened here. Whether you leave me a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with those questions yourself, I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Remember, power is something we all hold. Humanity is something we all share. The goal isn't to become someone who never gets it wrong. The goal is to become someone who is willing to see it, repair it, and grow. I'll see you in the next episode.